Synthetic turf, microplastic pollution and urban consolidation
Where will the kids play sport? Synthetic turf, microplastic pollution and urban consolidation.
With increasing urban consolidation and the high cost of land, the pressure on sports fields and the consequent increased wear is a challenge to manage.
Optimising the wear tolerance of turf with better grasses, enhanced soil mixes, appropriate nutrition and renovation strategies, getting training off the high wear areas, and quality day to day management etc does help. But, with increased wear as a result of heavy use, at some stage either the fields are worn to the point of being unusable and closed, or children (and adults) are turned away from being able to play field sports.
Like many who are in the business of managing sports fields, I saw synthetic turf as a real option to be able to get more people able to use the same area of sports fields. Then I started to learn about the pollution of our waterways and oceans that microplastics from synthetic turf. The following is an interesting read from a master’s student at Stockholm University where they advise that “Microplastics from artificial turfs have been recognized as the second most important source of microplastic emission in Sweden”
To make matters worse, there was the challenge of recycling the fields at the end of life, hotter surfaces, injuries from the surface etc etc. The article from the Guardian provides a dim view of the future of synthetic grass.
No doubt the synthetic turf industry is working on improvements to their products, but there seemed to be an absence of any peer-reviewed academic assessments that were overly favourable…happy to be shown that information if I missed it.
In reality, many Cities have already or will eventually “max out” the numbers of people they are able to have play on their grass sports fields. As an example, if now 30% of the Australian population under 15 are participating in some sort of field sport (approx. Ausplay statistics), that percentage will slowly decline as enough fields will simply not be available.
Slowly, there will need to be a strategic shift to alternate activities that can accommodate more people per hectare of sports grass such as touch football. Or more probably we can expect to see more growth in those activities that don’t need turf surfaces such as netball, Surf lifesaving, skate, BMX etc. If you want assistance to optimise the capacity of your facilities or with your planning for future parks and sports facilities don’t hesitate to contact us.
